Water - Day 1
Heron in Flight!
Day one of July and the month long theme of Water.
This is going to be my initial thoughts on the subject, some loose planning and an attempt to get an idea of a story that we can tell. It is not going to be a polished article!
Water - it’s all around us, in the air we breathe, in everything we drink, essential for almost all life on the planet. So how am I going to organise images of it? I could go right out and take some photos of steams, rivers, seas and lakes and that would complete the brief, but it would’t tell the story.
I think I need to consider the water cycle - from rainfall to groundwater, out into homes or industry, then back into drainage and treatment, eventually rejoining the natural watercourses to flow back out into the sea.
I will break this down into 3 parts
1) Where it comes from - the seas and clouds that result in rainfall and how that water moulds the landscape
2) How we capture and use the water - from storage in reservoirs and lakes, to its many uses in our everyday lives - this is a big one so may take up more of the months story
3) Its return to the watercourse - in the natural flow of things we would never have taken it out, so now we are returning to the natural flow of water from small streams, to wider rivers and eventual outflow into the sea
The first is very weather dependant, I will look for some moody skies and dramatic backdrops, this instantly seems to lend itself more to classical landscape. So I think I will try and buck that and focus instead on how water appears out of the air. Initial thoughts are:
Morning dew - water condensing out of the air onto flowers, spider webs that sort of thing
Rainfall - classic really, potential images are
drops in a puddle
rain running down windows (but need a really good powerful background to blur)
rain drops in a forest - running down leaves
Potentially capture movement of the foliage by the fall of the rain
People sheltering from the rain
Umbrellas in use
Windscreen Wipers in use - long exposure - or we could try a panning shot in time with the wiper, that would be a challenge
Puddle splashes and people or cars go through them
Lightening (challenging)
Then the moulding of the landscape - valleys cut by water, any erosion that we see as a result of water flow - maybe sand at a beach?
The second is by far and away the broadest subject!
Capture - this will be large scale capture, so lakes, reservoirs, that sort of thing - I will have to look into some local spill ways and reservoirs to see if we have any dramatic images. One option is to try and capture some dramatic images of the low levels of reservoirs to highlight the water shortages this summer?
Use of water - this will need further refinement
Use at home - water from a tap, a hose, a showerhead - good ideas for those busy days where maybe I can’t get out…….
Use in industry - look for old water mills, any settling pools in the north east, the piers in hartlepool which were used for water transportation, any aqueducts or canals. Then current day uses that are obvious such as car washes, street cleaners etc. Hot water coming from the coffee machine?
Sale of water - all the water goods out there, the many bottles of water, high use of plastic
Consumption - people drinking water, using water in gardens, washing cars, using pools, pouring water out for dogs etc
The third is back to the more landscape themed images, so I think I will concentrate on the larger waterways, but try and capture man and animal using them, rather that the waterways themselves. Unless a great image presents itself in the form of a really good return to the sea image, such as a low tide river flow cutting into mudflats type of thing, something that suits the drone.
That’s it for now - those are the results of around 20 - 30 minutes brainstorming - no doubt there will be lots of refinement and I have no idea if this is even of interest to anyone, but its is documenting my process and worst case will be useful for me to look back on in years to come!
UPDATE:
I ended up in Durham for a couple of hours wandering around the city and along the riverside. Durham was an industrial city that was significantly driven by the river and its waterfow, be that in use of the water itself in production or in the running of water mills. As such the river is a well controlled beast with a number of weirs and flow management structures in place.
It will not surprise that I ended up taking a number of images, of which I can only choose one!
I will leave a few of them at the bottom of the blog but this one is the pick of the day (pun very much intended!)
Heron in flight
